


Treasure Map + Booby Traps

by slightly_ajar



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Cold Open Challenge, Friendship, Team as Family, gratuitous pirate references, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:27:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25237687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightly_ajar/pseuds/slightly_ajar
Summary: This is the second of my own cold opens.The map looked just like an old treasure map that had been uncovered on an archaeological expedition should look - ragged around the edges, worn and marked with age and full of scrawled clues and dire warnings.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 16





	Treasure Map + Booby Traps

**Author's Note:**

> I re-watched The Goonies, I have no excuse.

The team’s footsteps echoed as they sprinted through the arched doorway ahead of them. They skidded to an urgent stop just over the threshold of the room. They’d learned to be cautious. 

“So,” Bozer panted, “what now?” 

The windowless space the team were in had been built with ancient stones with the floor becoming a geometric pattern of red and blue tiles a stride away from the doorway. The colourful design on the ground flowed up the walls to the ceiling and stopped feet away from the door across from the one Mac, Desi, Riley and Bozer were stood in. 

“This doesn’t look too bad, not after, you know.” Riley jerked a thumb over her shoulder to point behind her, “but I don’t trust it. What’s the catch?” 

The air was dry, stale and still. Wispy cobwebs hung from the high corners of the chamber and the air prickled with dust and anticipation. No living soul had breathed in that room for a long, long time. There were no skeletons sprawled across the floor which was an improvement on the last room the team had been in and there were no handprints smeared on the walls in what look like dried arterial blood which was a relief after the room before that. And the hallway before that with the rope bridges? Mac was pretty sure he’d have to sleep with the light on for a week after that particular adventure. For a person with a fear of heights it had been an exercise in exposure therapy, or ten minutes of abject terror, depending on how you looked at it. 

Mac held up the map in his hand and peered at the yellowing papyrus. “It looks like we just have to walk to the other side of the room but it can’t be that simple. Desi, can you translate this?” He tapped the two sentences written in swirling script below the outline of the room they were in. 

The map looked just like an old treasure map that had been uncovered on an archaeological expedition should look - ragged around the edges, worn and marked with age and full of scrawled clues and dire warnings. A fact finding mission that had begun without any belief in the map’s validity had turned into a trip into previously undiscovered caverns where Mac almost lost his head to a huge rolling blade and Bozer had needed hauling away from a long drop that had suddenly appeared when he’d accidently triggered a trip wire. 

“Hold this.” Desi handed Mac the flaming torch she was carrying. The fire flickered, curved shadows dancing around her as she took the map from Mac’s hands and held it up to the light. “It’s a cute rhyming couplet that basically says, ‘Watch your step.’” 

“Watch your step?” Mac repeated. “Let’s just try something.” He walked over to the doorway where part of the old stone had started to crumble and kicked at it until a piece came loose. “What happens when I do this?” 

Mac threw the pebble so it skipped across the coloured pattern on the floor. When it bounced on one of the red tiles a dart as long as Mac’s forearm and as thick as his thumb burst out of a crevice in the left hand side of the room. The team watched in silent horror as the arrow thudded into the wall across from it’s starting point, it’s sharp, jagged tip buried deep into the tile, and vibrated itself into stillness. 

“That looks like it would hurt.” Desi grimaced. 

“Don’t step on a red tile then, got it.” Mac closed one eyes, cringing, and took a tentative step forward onto a blue tile. He put both feet and his whole weight onto it and waited for the pain of being impaled by wickedly sharp wood to rip through him but nothing happened. He opened both eyes. “Okay, that worked, so let’s go.” 

He hopped onto the next blue stone followed, reluctantly, by Bozer. 

“Whose idea was this anyway?” Bozer groused, wobbling to and fro after a messy landing. 

“I think it was yours,” Riley said as she stepped onto a blue tile beside him. “You said: ‘Awesome, a treasure map and a spot marked with an X? Let’s get this!’ I’ve never seen you skip out of the War Room so fast.” 

“I say a lot of things, Riley,” Bozer said, making another jump, “the fact that you took time to remember that specific sentence just goes to prove that sometimes your priorities are all kinds of misplaced.” 

“Right now my priority is not dying.” Riley paused while she decided where to jump next, “There’s nothing misplaced about that.” 

“Ah come on, Boze,” Mac called, “You’ve always wanted to do something like this, you love pirate movies and quests. Do you remember that supernatural pirates script you wrote that only got shelved because you thought the makers of Pirates of the Caribbean would sue you if you made it?” 

Bozer stilled and gave a slow nod of satisfaction. “That script was cool. And it’s only shelved temporarily, give it a few more years and the public will be ready for a pirate reboot and I’ll be there.” 

“Don’t act like there isn’t a part of you that isn’t loving this too, Mac.” Desi held the torch high to light as much of the room as she could as she weighed up the risks of making bigger jumps to get to the other side quickly. “How many times did you watch The Goonies as a kid?” 

“Enough times to wear the tape out,” Mac admitted. “I loved all the booby traps and Data’s inventions. I actually have a theory about how I could make my own Slick Shoes, I’ve just never got around to building them. They would have been useful that time is Kazakhstan.” 

“You mean the time with that whole...” Desi waved her hand around in a circle, “...thing? God, yeah, Slick Shoes would have been useful! If you do ever make any I’d like to order a pair.” 

The team were about half way across the room, each of them focusing very intently on where their feet were positioned. 

“This is like extreme, killer hopscotch,” Riley said stretching her leg to jump. Her foot slipped as it landed, sliding forwards so that the tips of her toes crossed from the blue tile she was on to the red stone beside it. 

Everyone froze. No one breathed. The only sound was the hiss of the torch’s flames. When the air stayed empty of flying arrows and the screams of the dying everyone exhaled. 

“I’ve never understood the rules of hopscotch,” Bozer said, trying to lighten the mood. 

“There aren’t really any rules, Boze,” Desi jumped, paused and jumped again, steadily growing nearer the end of the puzzle, “you just, like, hop.” 

“So when does the scotching come into it?” 

Desi stilled and huffed out a breath. “I don’t know.” 

“See,” Bozer said, holding a finger up like he was counting the point he believed he’d just scored. “No one really knows the rules.” 

Mac jumped, landed and looked back over the distance he had covered. “You know who else probably loves pirate movies? Russ,” he said. ”He would have loved this wouldn’t he? All these puzzles with a promise of riches at the end, he’d have been in his element.” 

“Oh yeah,” Riley had got her breath back and was managing her steps very carefully, “there’s someone who definitely loves swash buckling. $50 says he dresses like a pirate at Halloween.” 

“Russ does have a piratical swagger,” Bozer said. “Do you think if I start calling him Captain Russ I could flatter him into giving me a raise?” 

Desi grinned. “I think he’d like being called High Seas Taylor or Redbeard Russ the Fearsome.” 

“Being given a buccaneering nickname might help him get over having to go to a meeting in DC and missing out on all this.” Mac steadied himself, readied his leg muscles and jumped off the tiles and onto the safe stone floor. “It’s worth a try.” 

“I guess that’s the downside of being the boss,” Desi said, landing beside Mac. 

“Missing out on hanging onto a ledge by your fingertips to travel in a private jet then sit in an air conditioned boardroom is the downside of being the boss?” Bozer braced himself and leapt between Mac and Desi. “That sounds terrible, I may cry. Look into my eyes – can you see the tears?” 

“Comparison if the thief of joy, Boze,” Riley said, “you’d probably hate being in a boardroom with by a bunch of scary government guys just as much as you’re not loving this.” She took a careful step forward, then another and hopped with a happy flourish to the safe section of the room. 

“Did I mention the part about hanging by my fingers over a bottomless pit?” Bozer asked. 

“The drop wasn’t actually bottomless,” Mac said, “you would have landed on a pile of rocks if you’d fallen.” 

Bozer’s expression folded into one of appalled alarm. “That doesn’t actually make it any better!” 

“Well, no, I suppose it wouldn’t." Mac had to concede. 

Since they were all safely on solid ground clear of the game of killer hopscotch and no one had a foot long dart of death sticking out of their bleeding bodies Mac could admit to himself that he actually was enjoying himself, almost as much as Russ would have been if he was there. Who wouldn’t? He and his friends had a genuine treasure map and they were passing through a series of complicated puzzles to reach an ancient artefact before some bad guys could find it first. It was like one of his boyhood dreams come true. 

“Let’s all just take a moment to appreciate what we’ve achieved here,” Bozer said. 

The patterned floor sat behind the team, benign and innocent looking. One more section of the map had been completed. “Okay, I’m done being appreciative,” Bozer added after a moment of silence. “Let’s get out of here.” 

The door out of the room led to a dark passageway. The team stayed close to one and other as they stumbled through the narrow path. As they followed the downward sloping route the air grew damp and cool and the distant sound of running water started to drift up towards them. 

“I hope we don’t end up having to swim,” Bozer said. “Because I don’t know about anyone else but I didn’t pack my board shorts and knowing this place the water is probably full of piranhas.” 

The light of the torch picked up a doorway, arched and as ominous as the ones before it. The sound of running water was clearly coming from the room beyond it. 

Mac sighed. “Here we go again.” 

Desi stepped into the room with slow caution. She checked for immediate threats and waved the rest of the team in after her when nothing appeared and tried to slice her in half. 

The room the team found themselves standing in was cool and damp. White tiles, faded and cracked with age, covered the floor, walls and ceiling. Moss and dark green weeds had grown through the cracks in the tiles and watermarks stained the walls. Goosebumps rose on the exposed skin of the team and they shivered, and not just because of the chill. The room was dominated by a large, wooden water wheel. It was broken in places but was still sound and a slow trickle of water ran over it from a hole in the ceiling high above it, dripping steadily through it’s slats. 

“So..? Riley said.

Mac held up the map for Desi to read. 

“Burn in the water, swim through the fire,” she read aloud. “That’s vague and scary sounding.” 

The team walked further into the room carefully and as they did the thin flow of water trickling down from the ceiling quickly grew steadily heavier until a rolling tide rushed over the water wheel. It began to turn, slowly at first then faster and faster. As it span the low, metallic clanking of machinery starting to move rumbled from somewhere under their feet. 

A muscle in the side of Mac’s jaw flickered. “Okay.” 

**Author's Note:**

> *MacGyver theme tune starts*  
> Do do do do DO do, do do do do DO
> 
> There’s bit in the Eddie Izzard stand up DVD Glorious where he talks about how boys don’t understand hopscotch. I decided to give that idea to Bozer when he was trying to lighten the mood. Mystic Hopscotch is [here](https://youtu.be/WRPOoJ4Apzc) if you want to listen to it.


End file.
